Speaking with EW about translatingTrick, Lahiri described the process as alternately pain-staking, gratifying, and immensely educational.
I would wish that pleasure and education and marveling that sense of amazement for any writer.
Read on below, and purchase your copy ofTrickhere.
Credit: Marco Delogu; Europa Editions
His niece used to babysit for my kids who, at the time, still needed a babysitter.
It was just his totally neighborly thing, a gesture.
We then received an invitation to join them and were really touched, and accepted.
We went up on Christmas Day and there was Domenico.
We just met and became friendly and then friends.
Thats how I came to know him, and then I started to word his work.
Why does his work speak to you?
His Italian is so beautiful, and such an interesting challenge for me to translate.
It was the first book I translated.
But I think [Trick] is just a one-of-a-kind book.
I dont know what it is.
For me, if its in Italian: that means translating.
Translation is a form of interpretation, after all.
I go through that various times until Im satisfied enough.
What I did both times was that I read it aloud.
And then I read it back to myself in English.
Obviously there was back and forth with my editor and with Domenico.
How is he involved in your process?Hes my friend, and so I ask him stuff.
Im very fortunate that way, to have a very good relationship with him.
I feel he trusts me and thats a huge thing, a big responsibility.
Theres a strange channeling there.
Did you feel more comfortable tackling his work, given that youd done it once before?
Did that alter your approach?In some sense absolutely, yes.
Both [Ties] and [Trick] are very compact, short novels.
Those novels have that.
Every writer has a signature, right?
They rely on certain adjectives, certain turns of phrase.
There was some familiarity, some sense of Ive been to this place.
But of course, its a totally different book.
Theres also the Henry James element.Yes, theres the whole intertextual component.
Henry James is inside of that book.
It meant a very different kind of translation.
It was kind of amazing.
But thats what he did.
Ingenious on his part.
I come very late to translation; I translated my first book two years ago.
Its an interesting shift, move, to now incorporate the translation work.
I just think its just feeding an entirely different set of needs in me.
Youre not outside of it anymore.
Its with an intimacy that I didnt have before.
Its clearly a selfish component.
I think translation gives you that access.
